


Letters

by immunologie



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Angst, Comfort/Angst, F/F, Friendship, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-05
Updated: 2013-12-06
Packaged: 2018-01-03 12:44:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1070591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/immunologie/pseuds/immunologie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Today I woke up with the same dream. It was of you again. It has always been of you. I try to squeeze out a little bit more from the recesses of my brain, hoping that the lost scenes of my life are still stored in there somewhere. I look for them in flashes, like the segments of a video reel. And today, it did flash.</i>
</p><p>  <i>Today, I saw red.</i></p><p>Future AU in 2 parts. One year after the final confrontation between the clones and Neolution, Cosima tries to forget the past as Delphine writes to someone she does not remember. Cophine with Punky Monkey brotp.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This came about while making a playlist for a coffeeshop AU I had in mind to write over the holiday break (one song in particular inspired it all - props if you can guess!), so that one is on the back burner while this one wrote itself out. It was originally supposed to be a one shot, but ended up being longer than expected so I’ll post it in 2 parts. Sorry for the sad.

_Have you ever loved somebody now gone, and you wish that you could have given them everything?_

She would think this aloud at times at the loft. Sarah probably figured it was one of her  _“think aloud because your mind runs faster than you can keep track of”_  geek moments - a coping mechanism to deal with what had happened in the past year.

She guessed everyone had their own way of dealing. Alison had started a new life in New York, away from the memories. She felt that deep down, it was really because Felix had always believed Alison could do Broadway, so her sister was out there, trying to achieve the dream her confidante left her with.

Sarah would come home tired, but would still swim in shots of gin before holing up quietly in Fee’s old bedroom partition. She would worry about an addiction problem on top of the PTSD, but Sarah would skip the ritual sometimes for a run in the park. Sometimes she would go without the alcohol for weeks and try something else of the active nature, like boxing lessons. Anything to get her too tired to think about anything, to help her sleep.

Cosima would think about it logically like she’d been accustomed to, but those words would always give themselves away to the stale air. She wondered if she needed the therapy or medication, but Sarah made them promise that they wouldn’t speak to anyone about what really happened - it was too dangerous; they couldn’t let it ever happen again as long as they were alive - so therapy probably wouldn’t work out so well. As for medicating… she hated it. She knew which medications were appropriate for their condition, but she adamantly refused Sarah’s offer to bullshit her way through Beth’s old therapist again.

Maybe it was to level the field. If Sarah held them all accountable with the remains of what was possible through human cloning after the destruction of Dyad and Neolution in the culmination of the year-long battle that changed all of their lives - and that of humanity - that they would never speak of it again lest a memory returns, then Cosima could deny science.

Perhaps it would help her deny it all. Forget it all.

Then maybe…  _maybe_ , she could finally sleep without dirty blonde hair and a girl with the sun in her eyes searing through her dreams.

Maybe, she could forget the science that made the girl in her dreams forget about  _her_.

——

She woke up, scant sweat on her hairline and a feeling of catching her breath. She had probably tossed in her sleep again. She would randomly have those dreams that bridged on the edge of reality because she would find herself moved upon waking, like she was running in her dream. She could make out glimpses of it, little flashes of neurons. She was chasing someone, but she couldn’t make out who - but she was heading to an airport to do so.

She rose and headed to the bathroom, splashing water on her face to cool off. To wake up.

She combed back blonde hair with her fingers, the brown roots showing. She wondered why she kept it dyed when she couldn’t even remember her preference for coffee.

The day after she was finally released from the rehabilitation center (a little over a month after she was discharged from the hospital), she realized she had forgotten how to use the coffeemaker that she walked out to the nearest shop and ordered their strongest cup. She had frozen for several seconds when they had asked her how she liked it, searching her brain for a flash - anything. The lady behind the counter figured she probably wasn’t fully awake and suggested a shot of espresso. She’d ordered it every day since.

But it never seemed to help her with her memories. Retrograde amnesia was what the doctors called it. She had come in with a head injury, among other bruises and cuts, and was in a coma for months. She finally emerged with no recollection of who she was or of what had happened prior. They had found her off the road at the scene of a car accident - or what was left of it, as most of everything had been burned. Most likely a fire that sparked on impact. She had been the only survivor.

She had no identification on her, but was finally recognized by an old friend who had apparently gone to university with her. She was wary of the woman at first, as she had no recollection of such a time or of this person, but became comfortable with her presence after the woman helped her track her records. So when she would forget, she could pull out her driver’s license (though she never drove now, and feared she never would again) and say… _Delphine Cormier_.

She was Delphine and her friend was Aimee.

Still, Aimee had not seen her since their time in university and did not know what Delphine had been up to afterwards when they had lost touch with one another. They had no other mutual friends and Delphine had no other family left. She was alone, until Aimee offered to let her stay at her flat until she could figure things out.

So she woke up every day trying to remember who she was all over again, and how to make coffee, how to do her hair, to get used to Aimee having to identify herself every time she entered the apartment, and what she liked about science, because her transcript told her she had studied those types of courses.

But every morning, the one thing she wanted to remember the most was who it was she was running to.

After remembering the taste of a buttered-croissant as she swallowed the last bite, she returned to her room and sat down at her desk. She pulled out her journal and continued to write her letters to the person in her dreams.

_Today I woke up with the same dream. It was of you again. It has always been of you. I try to squeeze out a little bit more from the recesses of my brain, hoping that the lost scenes of my life are still stored in there somewhere. I look for them in flashes, like the segments of a video reel. And today, it did flash._

_Today, I saw red._

——

 _She had left her_.

When she would think back on the crash, she would wish that they had stayed longer. In her dreams, she would imagine shoving off Sarah and running into the fire. She would keep looking, no matter the burn, until she found her. But when she would wake up, the only burn would be the last words she’d heard.

_Cosima!_

The next thing she had known, she was groaning off the back of the front seat and Delphine was no longer in the car. It had happened so quickly.

Sarah pulling them out as she yelled breathlessly to get down. Shots firing. Then actual fire.

They had rolled down the slope off the road before she could even orient herself. Then, before she could even yell out Delphine’s name, the flash of everything disintegrating to nothing. Her world had turned black.

And she had left her again.

When they found out Delphine had survived and was in the hospital, they had rushed to see her - Sarah finding a way for Cosima to sneak into her room so they wouldn’t have to give identifying information.

She had sobbed uncontrollably for months, joining Sarah and Alison on their gin rounds, as they had lost Fee and the little girl (she couldn’t even say her name anymore, it hurt too much) as well. She’d try to brighten up for her sisters; be stronger - as  _her_  person was still alive - but to be honest with herself, she felt she had always worn her emotions on her sleeves, and that made it even worse.

When news came that Delphine had awoken, she had rushed once more to visit her, only to be rejected time and time again… Delphine no longer remembered her.

And as much as it pained her every time she tried to leave little gifts in hopes that they would allow Delphine to recall a happier time, only to receive a frightened stare, the thought that she was scaring and delaying the recovery of the woman she loved with her own presence pained her even more.

So she let her go. She went with her sisters across the ocean, in the hopes of new beginnings.

But every day began with the same thought.  _She had left her_.

Maybe, if she reconciled these thoughts - faced her fears, faced _her_  - she could finally forgive herself.

Cosima knew that there was little hope that Delphine would ever remember their time together. But at least, she could be there. At least, this time, she wouldn’t leave her to battle the memories and the fire alone.

Sarah walked in with a bottle in her hand and plopped down on the couch with a sigh.

“So Cos… let’s do this, yeah?”

She shook her head. “Not tonight. I’m booking a ticket for Paris.”

——

“Who are you writing to?” Aimee would ask.

“I… I’m not sure yet,” she would respond. Her friend knew she kept a journal to help with processing her thoughts, to hopefully uncover the hidden parts of her brain that still remembered how to write, or how to smoke a cigarette.

The first time they gave her a pen, she immediately knew what to do with it. The first word she wrote was  _Enchantée_ , and she greatly wondered why.

Perhaps the pen itself had been enchanted. But there had to be a reason for it, a science. She would sit down and read about her condition, and read about Immunology, hoping to reawaken a former state.

She would become desperate at times at the emptiness because… she was Delphine, but she didn’t know who Delphine was. Aimee would find her passed out on the couch with an empty wine bottle, and that led to the letters.

It was a check-up with the therapist where she told the story of her dreams. They asked her what she liked the most right now. She said she liked to write.

 _Then write to them_ , they told her.  _Write to your dreams_.

So she did.

It helped her focus on something, it gave her a goal. To find out who she was looking for. She wondered if someone else was looking for her as well, but perhaps she was just looking for herself. At the least, it calmed her down, though when Aimee would ask the question (which Delphine realized was a check on her progress) she still didn’t know.

“Well, why don’t we try something different today?” Aimee suggested that afternoon.

She looked up with a puzzled brow. “What do you mean?”

“You’re always indoors, sitting. You want to go outside? You never know when something might trigger a memory.”

She chuckled. “What would we do?”

Aimee shrugged and looked down at her trainers. “Go for a jogging?”

She hummed as she remembered herself running through her sleep. She smiled. “Let’s go.”

The cool wind lapped at her face as her arms and legs crusaded through the air. She felt herself gaining speed, she felt her muscles regaining the memory of something akin to freedom. It was like flying, this running. And as her heart flew in her chest, she began to see flashes.

It was a dark tunnel, and red. It led to light, and red. She was running, but this time she wasn’t alone. There was laughter. She was holding onto something. Hands, and red. Wine.

She slowed to a walk and caught her breath, Aimee catching up behind her.

“Whew! That was fast!” she wheezed.

Delphine chuckled out a waft of air and nodded. “That was… like flying.”

Aimee grinned. “You remembered something, didn’t you?”

She smiled as she pulled out a pack of cigarettes, lighting up.

“Woah, woah, you’re supposed to be keeping healthy—”

She waved her off as she puffed out smoke. “It’s… helping me remember. After a jogging like this…”

That night she opened her journal and wrote:

_Today I went running. It was like flying and writing all at once. And red. I think whoever made running made it because they knew I’d love it._

_I love it because it led me to you. Amid all of the storms in my head, the empty rooms with damaged curtains, my private monsters.. I finally saw you today. You are the first portrait down the darkened corridors of my sleep. You are the first woman. You are Red. Red like wine, red like my heart that allows my little synapses to remember you, that allows the feeling of warmth when you held my hand._

_But you see, Red, the problem now is, all I’ve found is a portrait that has blurred like a Monet. I do not know your name, I don’t know where you are. All I know is that I love you somehow._


	2. Chapter 2

_Cosima!_

She woke up and slapped the alarm, rummaging the bedside for her glasses.

Squinting through the glass, the loft came into focus. It was neat for the most part, as if everything in its inhabitants’ lives were in order, just as it was.

 _What if it all was just a dream?_  The jolts of a second, the smoke, the dents, the broken glass. They didn’t seem real. They were so different from the clarity of the air and the room outside of her frames.  _What if the entire past year had never happened anywhere but in her head?_

“Cos! Wake up! Your damn flight is leaving in 3 hours and your bloody…  _bag_  isn’t packed— ow!”

A thud and more obscenities.

She scrambled out the partition to find Sarah creating a scene in the makeshift kitchen, her suitcase shoved to the edge of the couch next to a pile of clothes.

Her flight was real. Everything  _had_  happened, and was still happening.

She knew it to be so because of the proof before her. Sarah had never kept anything orderly and clean for long. She had never considered herself good at taking care of anything. She never considered herself a good mother. She was always a woman on the run.

And now… Sarah Manning had turned domestic. Fee’s old loft was always as clean as she could muster, no matter how tired she was the night prior, or how wasted and hungover she was. She took care of it. And she never ran anymore except as a form of letting off steam in the park. She was taking care of everything now, rushing to fix them breakfast before her sister took off, taking care of the rest of them - trying to be a leader, trying to be  _good_. Trying to be everything she had failed to be with Felix and her little girl.

Cosima quickly folded the clothes she had picked out, stuffing them in the suitcase before sliding onto a stool at the tiny counter.

2 fried eggs that served as eyes to the face of the bacon and biscuit looked up from the plate in front of her. She glanced up and gave a small smile.

Sarah smiled back and sat down with her own plate. “It was Kira’s favorite… when I would cook for her.”

“…I know.”

It must have been so hard to say that, but Sarah did.

“Thanks, sis,” Cosima continued softly.

Sarah chuckled lightly. “Eat up.”

The drive to the airport was quiet. It was always quiet when they drove until Cosima herself would speak up. Perhaps it was Sarah’s way of being respectful. They had fought the day of the flight booking with Sarah trying to stop her from making another mistake.

The danger of it was that they knew Delphine didn’t recognize Cosima anymore. If she attempted to encourage the memories to come back, who was to say that the wrong memories - the details of the cloning program, the possibility of it falling into the wrong hands again - wouldn’t show up before the memories of Cosima?

It took moments of yelling, rediscovering buried scars, and drunken nights until they finally came to a compromise. Perhaps they both realized why Sarah had moved them back into the old loft with all of its old photographic reminders on the walls and was now playing mom, and why Alison had decided to immerse herself in something where she would hear Felix’s voice calming her down before going onstage. Perhaps it was Cosima’s turn now to go back home.

Sarah pulled out her suitcase from the trunk and sighed in front of her. “Got your ticket and ‘passport’?”

She nodded, “Yeah.”

“Remember, one month, yeah? If she doesn’t remember you and your time together in one month…”

“I have to say goodbye for good,” she whispered, looking down. “Yeah, I know…”

Sarah drew her in for a hug. “Take care of yourself.”

“You too.”

When the call to board came, she pulled out her passport to insert her boarding pass. A stub fell to the ground. She picked it up and realized it was for the bus she had taken from Minnesota after she realized Delphine had initially lied to her.

It took a while, but they had worked it out. Delphine made it very clear to her in her actions from then on.  _Show, don’t tell._

As Cosima settled in her seat, she remembered Delphine running after her all the way to Toronto to help her solve everything.  _324B21_.

And later,  _You are more than a number or a code, because there are no other numbers. Because I’ve finally figured it out. You are the only one. You are the one I want to spend the rest of my life with._

She grasped at the ring on her necklace. It was her turn now to do the same.

——

“What are you thinking about?” Aimee asked.

“Her,” she replied, looking out over the lake. “Trying to see her face.”

“Hmm.” Aimee quieted.

Delphine turned to face her friend on the park bench. “I know what you’re thinking.”

Her flatmate gave her a puzzled look. “What am I thinking?”

She sighed and grazed her eyes over her empty palms. “That if this girl did exist, and I felt this strongly about her, then why isn’t she here with me right now? Why did she leave me…?” she murmured, an ache in her throat.

There could have been many possibilities - all of which she didn’t even want to think of in case they became true. But how could she find out the truth unless she solved each and every question?

“I thought you wouldn’t want to talk about the accident.”

“I don’t even  _remember_  this accident. Maybe if I did, I might know what happened to her…” she groaned into her hands. Looking up, she saw Aimee still there, looking out silently over the park. “Pourquoi tu fais tout cela pour moi? I’m a mess. You didn’t have to help me,” she continued.

Her friend looked to her and, after a moment, replied, “I just… wanted to.”

“Pourquoi?”

Aimee remained silent. Delphine rose and trotted towards the lakefront. To breathe. She looked across the water to the trees that lined the horizon. Everything was moving gently, like poetry. Then a blur. She blinked and squinted into the distance. A breeze blew through the leaves. She scoffed a laugh that sounded like rain.

“Are you alright?”

“The wind is playing games with me,” she replied, her voice a gentle surrender. The wind had blown away all the flashes of that day.

Aimee stood beside her and spoke. “My mother got diagnosed with Alzheimer’s a few years back. My family decided to place her in a home because we were all too busy. We thought it best. One day, she got out - we still don’t know how - but she ended up getting lost—”

There was a crack in her friend’s voice, but it kept going.

“They found her 2 days later in the park. She was never the same again, and she left us soon after that…” Aimee faced her, the contours of her face creasing like trenches, holding it back. “She got lost the day I was supposed to visit, but I never did because I…  _I fucking forgot_! I’m a fucking asshole and I have never forgiven myself and— and I guess that’s why I’m trying to do what I can - what I couldn’t before.”

She turned away, hanging her head. “I’m probably doing all of this for the wrong reasons, et je suis désolée.”

Delphine held her softly by the shoulder. “I’m sorry that happened, and… I’m glad you’re here. I wouldn’t be able to do this without you.”

_Red, today I realized something. I don’t know if you’re still out there somewhere, but if you are… I can understand why it would be difficult to come back. But if you do decide to return one day, I believe in second chances because I’ve lived it. And I don’t know if I’m being selfish - but I do want to remember. I want to remember what you look like, how you smile… how you looked at me. It’s hard going back down that road because for all I know, you could’ve already moved on and I’m probably grasping at the wind as it’s taunting me, like empty dreams._

_But I know now, my head isn’t empty! I’ve remembered how to write! I remember liking little things like cigarettes after a jogging, getting lost in library stacks, the beauty of fallen leaves, dandelions, palm creases - and the other day, I don’t know how it got on my desk (as my memory does still fail at times), but there was a chocolate-covered vanilla ice cream bar wrapped in foil, and I remembered liking that so much as well._

_So much I remember. But it never seems enough._

_I can’t remember the big things, the best things…_

_But I believe that they’re just there in the dusty corners, waiting to be rediscovered. So if you would like, Red, I wish you would join me on this new adventure. And if I’m starting to sound desperate, I’m sorry. It’s because I feel that you alone have the key to the treasures in my mind._

——

She quietly closed the journal and sighed, her breath as constricted as the gnaw in her chest; attempts to corral the immensity of feelings that were on the brink of pouring out of the cracks of the self-fortification she had managed to scrap together in the time since the plane had taken off and in the silent waking moments of her hotel room.

She  _knew_  it wouldn’t be easy, she told herself this over and over again like a mantra of the possessed. But that was the problem.

Cosima had become a possessed woman - with the idea that she could bring back Delphine, that she could possibly bring back the dead brain cells that held those precious moments of happiness.

It had taken her almost 3 weeks now and she was feeling the impending seal on the doors of a dream, like the football player who suffered a spinal injury and would never walk or run to play the game he grew up dreaming of again. It was the last CNN special she saw on television that evening before organizing the compartments of her thoughts versus her feelings, the motions she went through every time she would pay a visit to the flat. Perhaps it was the world telling her what she didn’t want to tell herself.

She reasoned that  _she_  was the football player, even though Delphine was the one who had suffered the brain trauma, because she remembered everything. She remembered what it was like to reach heaven and then realizing you would never see it again for the rest of your existence. It was the realization that her life had fallen apart, and she could do nothing but stare through its gates, never touching it.

It was torture, dropping by almost every night, feeling the weight of her guilt - of the past, and of the present - as she stole up the fire escape and through the window of the blonde’s room. 

At first, she had told herself she would do it right; inquiring within the bounds of the law to find the apartment, then waiting by the coffee shop down the block where she would watch, to her simultaneous pain and delight, Delphine ordering her shots of espresso before going about with her day, passing the woman with the glasses and the broken smile at the corner table by the door - the woman she had asked to spend the rest of her life with - every day with nothing but a cordial smile or a rushed hello.

She would find herself at the park, helplessly watching the blonde expend her frustrations to her friend from afar, until 2 weeks had gone by and she could help it no longer. Sarah had taught her how to open windows. If only there was an instruction manual on how open the windows of darkened corridors.

She read the journal. She would run her fingers over the script, remembering the poems she’d find on her bedside every morning, trying to etch Delphine’s touch on her skin. Gifts. So she would leave gifts, like an eskimo pie, and she would watch. She would regain hope at the small things Delphine recalled, but it was never her face and she felt even more guilty.

“So what are you going to do?” Sarah had asked her earlier. She didn’t need to tell her that she had a week left until her flight back.

“I need more time,” she sighed.

“Cos…”  
“No. She hasn’t remembered anything about the cloning—”  
“Does she remember  _you_?”

Cosima swallowed thickly, her jaw tightened. “…No. But she remembers little things about us, just…”

“…She just can’t associate them with you,” Sarah replied quietly.

She sniffed. “Yeah.”

After a moment of silence, Sarah tried a different tone. “I mean, did you bring your red coat? Did you try… I dunno… uh, holding her hand? ‘Killer grades’?”

“Yeah right, Sarah. As if I don’t look like a stalker right now waving like a lunatic at the coffee shop every freaking day. You remember the last time I tried to touch her at the hospital?? She almost flipped and shouted for hospital security!”

“Yeah, yeah…  _but_ … she didn’t, did she?”

Cosima surveyed her thoughts. Delphine had never told the nurses about her visits. Delphine, though frightened and confused, had allowed Cosima to return each time.

But  _why_?

She blinked rapidly as she stuttered through her thoughts, “Uh—uhm, I don’t—I don’t have the fucking red coat anymore. You know that. What do you want me to do - go buy another one and appear with a wine bottle?”

“I mean… you could.”  
“I’m not stealing a red coat from Paris, Sarah.”  
“Well something about you then struck her subconscious because she let you stay.”  
“Wow, look at you thinking logically.”  
“At least one of us is. Get a grip, Cos!”  
“Alright! Just… let me think about it.”

And when she thought about it, she became even more frustrated because she actually did “borrow” a red coat from one of the apartments one time and all it afforded was a second longer of a linger at the coffee shop - nothing else, no hint of recognition.

As the last days passed with no improvement, all she could feel was cold and sterility, as if she’d finally submitted to a life floating in alcohol while completely sober. Perhaps it was to cleanse herself from finally feeling anything at all. It was a preparation for her eventual goodbye.

And when she had passed the word “dyad” in her journal reading that final night, she knew she could stay no longer.

She gripped her necklace and wept.

She took it off and laid it next to the journal, finally understanding that letting go also means a chance for both of you to fly.

 _I’ll always wish the loveliest winds for you_ , she whispered to the woman sleeping soundly in her bed.

And that night, when she spoke her final goodbye, she asked the heavens to help her stop wishing on dead stars. But when she climbed out the window, she didn’t see the moonlight shining on the blonde’s back, revealing the constellations full of breath, just sleeping for now.

——

Something was different that morning. Something had happened in her sleep. She just couldn’t remember.

But she knew there was  _something_.

For one, she didn’t dream that night - or at least one that she recalled. And in the preceding nights she had slept soundly. She’d been waking up to her comforter still cocooned around her instead of the sloshy mound that had left her like the trappings of another memory. As if angels had been dropping by to keep her warm.

As if  _someone_ …

It was the first time she thought to gaze at the window. She slowly moved towards it and focused on the lock. If there was one thing she did know, it was her fear of sleepwalking during the running dreams, and though it had never been proven, it nonetheless gave her a reason to make sure the window was locked every night.

So how come this morning it had come undone?

She quickly lifted the glass and looked down the fire escape, her eyes scanning for any trace, her lungs inhaling any reminiscent smell in the cold air.

Then a knock. She walked back to the door, still half-confused, half-worried.

“Bonjour!” Aimee greeted. “I’m running down to grab some coffee in a bit. You want one?”

She rummaged her head.

Aimee lowered her brows and looked past her shoulder. “Are you alright? Why is your window blasting with the fury of Winterfell?”

“Uhm, sorry—oui, ça va. Go ahead, it’s okay. I won’t have one today,” she fumbled as she whirled back towards the window.

Aimee lifted an eyebrow. “Okay… I’ll just… go get ready. Don’t freeze!” she called out before closing the door.

Delphine was left once more with the silence of the corridors. She sat on the edge of the bed and sighed, wondering what was to become of her, if she would always be like this.

And that’s when she saw it. The difference. The  _something_.

A ring, basking in the morning’s rays that managed to filter through the blinds. A ring on a chain, sitting patiently next to her journal full of scrawled writings, calling to her like forgotten voices in her ears.

She approached it cautiously.

 _Someone had been in her room_. And not just last night. It must have been a while since she last checked the window lock. It must have been the reason for her peaceful nights - which was ironic when one thought of a stranger watching over you as you slept. How many times does that happen in one’s lifetime?

Wait.

A flash.

The same ring dangling from a familiar neck. White walls. Sterile. But the voice it belonged to had been soothing. Calm. Soft. Light.

It had happened twice. It was the same stranger.

Delphine reached for the ring, and it was then that she knew.

When she lifted it into her palm, she  _knew_. As if the metal itself served as a conductor from the lightning storms of the universe’s memories straight to the electricity that awakened in the shadows of her cells, the rooms ablaze with light, ablaze with fire. She was running with the fire as it coursed through the corridors and the ceilings of her mind, as it reached the portrait, brushing it with life, with lines, with a face.

It was the first word she wrote, and it was the last word she spoke in the car that day.

It was giving up years of a life’s work for a life’s conversation with the voice she’d been searching for all her life.

It was accepting the sacrifice of one’s own life because  _her_  life was more important, and that she would run to the ends of the earth for her.

It was the taste of red wine the first time she really felt alive in autumn. It was running while holding hands. It was the cigarettes she was teased about. It was the dandelion on a wrist with the scent of perfume passing over her nose as a hand stroked her hair, saying _I like it blonde_.

It was the eskimo pie the girl bought for her after their first time. It was the eskimo pie she herself bought after the night when she learned the locations of the ridges inside where her fingers could orchestrate the arching of the girl's back in rhythm with the hot breaths against her ear, against her lips.

It was the universe they saw in each other’s eyes as they panted and moaned, their insides burning with the crash of the oceans, the flood in the sheets the remnants of mountains they carved in each other’s chests.

And she was the girl. Delphine had no doubt about it.

She was the girl who stole into the night. She was the girl at the hospital.

She was dreadlocks and glasses and the broken smile at the coffee shop. She was the wind in the park.

She was heartache and happiness and everything in between. She was everything.

Delphine finally understood. It was the biggest thing - the  _best_  thing - in the littlest of things. A ring in the palm of her hand, awakening memories like heaven; soft, light, and calm. A feeling of the eternal.  _Forever_.

The forever she’d asked the day she slipped it onto the girl’s finger as she held the small frame from behind and whispered her promise in the girl’s ear that one sunset.

Finally leaving it here could only mean one thing.  _Goodbye_.

“Aimee!” she gasped, hurrying out the door.

Her friend spun around as she buttoned her coat. “What? What is it?”

“We have to stop her!”

——

“Where to? She could be anywhere by now,” Aimee asked again over the hum of the engine.

Delphine sat still amidst the newly-formed jumble in her head.

“Please tell me you haven’t forgotten just now after remembering everything…”

“Non, non! I think I know where she is, if we could get there in time,” she blurted.

“Where?”

“L’aéroport,” she nodded to herself before turning to her friend. “Like in my dream.”

Aimee chuckled as she put the car in drive. “Well, let’s go get the girl of your dreams then!”

——

She looked up her gate number on the screen, then around the terminal for the signs.

After noting her direction, she looked back outside the glass walls to Paris. She sighed and wondered if she should've just tried talking to the blonde and telling her the truth. But what if she didn’t believe her?

 _No_. She forced her mind shut and picked up the handle to her suitcase.

She turned towards her terminal wing when she heard a familiar voice. The loveliest voice.  _Hello?_

She wondered how the mind could be so cruel. She continued walking.

_Hello?_

“Hello! S'il te plaît…”

It was a real voice. Cosima stopped.

“ _I know you_ ,” it said.

She drew in the deepest breath before slowly turning around, putting on the bravest face of her life.

 _Delphine_.

She blinked. The woman was still there, smiling, expecting. Cosima refused to deny the words.

Delphine Cormier was looking at her like she had always looked at her.

And when she saw her -  _really_ saw her - it was like she had the wind knocked out of her. Cosima Niehaus had flown across the ocean, stolen into hospitals and apartment buildings, waited at coffee shops for hours, had almost died battling a genetic disease, uncovered and foiled one of the greatest scientific schemes in history, shot bullets at trained special forces, survived a car crash, lived in secrecy across continents - and now, when she had finally found what she’d been looking for, standing in front of the pretty French woman with curly blonde hair and the sun in her eyes, she had no idea what to say.

So they stare at one another.

Until Delphine cautiously approaches. Until they stand face to face, an arm’s length apart. The blonde’s face crinkles in gentle quivers as she breathes a sigh. She reaches out to touch Cosima’s face.

Cosima doesn’t move lest it be the last thing she’ll ever feel. But Delphine says,

“Cosima.. ?”

She nods, though she is about to cry. The blonde smiles.

“Enchantée,” she whispers.

Cosima releases the ache from her throat.  _At last._

“Enchantée.”

——

_The following day…_

The phone rang in her lap. She hurriedly picked it up before they decided to close the plane door.

“Hello?”

“Cosima! Where the hell are you?? Why the hell have you not been answering my bloody calls?!” Sarah yelled through the receiver.

“Fuck, I’m so sorry, Sarah, it’s just been crazy—”

“Are you alright??”

“Yes! I rescheduled my flight last minute yesterday and today was the earliest I could fly out.”

“Oh bloody hell. You should’ve told me Cos! You had me fucking worried— but at least you’re on the flight now, yeah?”

“Yes,” she smiled as a familiar hand weaved its fingers through hers, giving a reassuring squeeze. “We’ll see you at home soon.”

“Alright, I’ll— wait… did you say ‘ _we_ ’?”

She could hear a slight smirk in her sister’s voice.

“Yeah,” she grinned, meeting hazel eyes in the seat next to her.

“We.”


End file.
